Why no 5.56mm IMBEL FALs, or kits?

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The upper receiver is the serial #'d part. DSA makes a .243 version if I recall correctly. I think the FNC is a 5.56, similar to the FAL.
 
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The FNC is the result of a drunken one night stand between an M16 and an AK.
 
They should import these, no idea why not. You would think DSA would like them, but no... I mean, Imbel imports receivers.

I'd buy one. I want a .223, and am looking at various things lightly, but would now love a folding .223 FAL. I think they even make them with alloy receivers which work due to the lower recoil force. And, AR mags, so no worries there.

Maybe someday.
 
DSA has a .223 FAL in the works.

You can look for the Springfield Armory SAR-4800 in .223. These were made by IMBEL and imported by Springfield and use M16 mags. They are out there, just gotta find 'em.
 
There are also a small number of .223 FALs built on Williams Arms alloy receivers floating around out there...
 
I think that they are a current issue arm. That could explain why we haven't seen any of them yet.
Does anyone know if they use the FAL lower reciever? It would be cool to be able to switch uppers with the FAL and have two different guns. :cool:
 
Meeper on the FAL Files makes .223(and other caliber) conversions. He even has quick change conversions for multiple caliber set ups.
 
Springfield used to sell 223 fals. They didn't sell well. Too heavy, too expensive.

Any fal built on a Williams aluminum upper receiver using a high intensity rifle round like a 308 or 223 is just a bomb wainting to blow up in your face. Don't believe me, ask the guys on the FAL Files they had to learn the hard way. Lots of guys lost money and there were a lot of hard fellings. Either way, these are outright dangerous. The question you have to ask your self is if aluminum was safe in this design why didn't one of the 90 some countries that adopted it use aluminum? Because it was totally unsafe, as some tests by white laboratories (IIRC) proved at the request of DSA .

Before someone brings up the AR15, they are a completely different locking design and there is no real stress on their receiver like with the FAL locking block design.
 
surfinUSA,

Any fal built on a Williams aluminum upper receiver using a high intensity rifle round like a 308 or 223 is just a bomb wainting to blow up in your face. Don't believe me, ask the guys on the FAL Files
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Funny, but it's meeper at FALfiles that does the .223 conversions on the Williams Arms receivers. The two I've seen (one of which I owned for a while) were done by meeper and were owned by the guys at Volunteer Ordnance. .223 exerts a lot less boltface thrust than .308, making the conversion possible. The headspace on mine didn't change one iota over the time I owned it. .308 on a Williams? No go. .223 on a Williams? Whole diff'rent story...

Will it hold up over the long haul? Prob'ly not; TANSTAAFL and all. Plenty good enough for many, many thousands of rounds? Sure. Keep an eye on your headspace, though...
 
My understanding is that meeper does alot of pistol cartridge conversions with these also. But I'd like to see an HP White test on these receivers with the 223.

Alot of people put together a lot of stuff. if they do it often enough, people tend to think they know something, when in reality they just know how to put together a lot of stuff. Without proper testing you're just being a test case for someone else.

Most of that stuff on the Fal Files went down more than a year ago and alot of guys are still pissed off over the whole thing. What makes this worse was more than one supposedly reputable gunsmith swore up and down that these receivers were safe in 308 with no testing just BS

The 223 and 308 operate at similar pressures and that pressure is focused on a smaller area with the 233. I would think that would be more likely to induce a fracture than that same force spread over a larger area. I'm not an engineer, thats why I'd like to see a test done by engineers that know what they are doing, especially on a receiver known for failure.
 
surfinUSA,

The 223 and 308 operate at similar pressures and that pressure is focused on a smaller area with the 233.
Click to expand...

"Chamber pressure" and "boltface thrust" are two different things, and have very different effects on battering of the locking lug bearing areas.

My 5.45 SSG82 has higher chamber pressures than my Mosins, yet it has only two dinky rear-locking lugs, and the bolt handle locking on the receiver. Quelle dommage! What were those cats at VEB Ernst Thalmann thinking?!? :eek:

http://www.thefiringline.com/forums/showthread.php?t=134560&highlight=boltface
 
Hello, Mechanical Engineer here. Whoever said that the aluminum fal reciever is unsafe at any speed is correct. The aluminum recievers can fail with as little as a hundred rounds of .308. I believe FALfiles and DSA have testing data for them which shows this.

Just cutting the cartridge down to an intermediate round like .223 isn't going to cut it. It may drop the loads put on the reciever by half or two thirds. In engineering terms that might buy you about an order of magnitude more fatigue cycles before the gun fails. But thats still on the order of a thousand or a few thousand. It is easily approachable by a dedicated shooter. Oh some may last longer and some shorter, but thats what you're looking at. It will fail and lets hope nobody gets hurt.

If I recall correctly the FAL lockup transmits load through the receiver. This is the wrong design for use with aluminum. What you want is a lockup between the bolt and the barrel like the AR15, the Mossberg 500, or winchester 1300. That shields the aluminum components from most of the stresses of firing and makes the gun safe over a longer lifespan.

Making a big change like going to aluminum from steel requires completely re-engineering the part. No offense meant to gunsmiths, but thats a little over most of their heads. Its my understanding that Williams was basically a group of machinists who thought they were good enough to do the job. So they basically beefed up the steel reciever (or possibly not) and called it good. Well obviously it wasn't good enough in hindsight. If an engineer had tried that we would have lost our license and possibly looked at jail time for criminal negligence. Hopefully they have faced similar consequences.
 
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